Connecting with Your Divine Feminine Power through the Tibetan Buddhist Practice of Green Tara

Fed up with the patriarchy? In this episode of A Show of Hearts, host Rosemary Pritzker dives into the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Green Tara, who is a beloved deity revered as the great mother. Doing this practice not only shows reverence for her but helps us to cultivate the divine feminine energy in ourselves and to recognize it all around us. Rosemary shares how she came to the practice 19 years ago in Montana, what it has offered her over the years, how she’s turned to it in times of need, and what you can expect to gain from doing it yourself. This practice can help you to feel empowered, offers a bridge from your everyday life to the divine, and it reminds us we are all part of the same ocean.

A rich and complex practice, Rosemary talks about the concept of archetypes, explains who Green Tara was, guides you through the mantras of the practice, explains what they mean and what to visualize and then leads you through the practice itself. This episode was recorded as a live class in her home, so you’ll hear the experiences of attendees and their in-depth Q&A session about Tibetan Buddhism after completing the meditation. If you haven’t tried Green Tara practice before but love meditation, give it a try and connect to your inner divine feminine!

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Materials for beginners: Lama Tsomo
Rosemary’s mom’s book: Why is the Dalai Lama Always Smiling
For more advanced resources: Ewam
Ewam Garden of One Thousand Buddhas: Buddha Garden
Ani Tsering Wangmo singing Medicine Buddha Mantra

Thanks so much for listening! If you like what you heard, please subscribe and give a five star review on iTunes, visit www.ashowofhearts.com or follow us @ashowofhearts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook! Take a screenshot of this episode and share it in your Instastory and use the hashtag #ashowofhearts . Feel free to email us at info@ashowofhearts with any questions or comments!

Transcript

You’re listening to A Show Of Hearts, the podcast about finding the courage to live a deep and magical life. I’m your host, life coach Rosemary Pritzker. (singing)

In today’s episode I’ll be leading you in the Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice of Green Tara, the Great Mother. You can think of it as kind of a sacred goddess practice, designed to get us in touch with the divine feminine.

I began learning this about a month after I graduated high school, in the summer of 2000, when I did a two week Green Tara retreat with my teacher Tulku Sangak Rinpoche. Since then I’ve done Green Tara practice with my sangha or spiritual community, based in Montana, many times. And I’ve done it countless times on my own as well. So this practice is very close to my heart.

Part of why I wanted to share it with you is because it’s one of the tools I’ve used to center myself in order to more effectively follow my heart in life. It’s allowed me to sort of commune with the divine, get my head on straight, and drop more deeply into my heart. Centering in this way is incredibly helpful in the pursuit of knowing yourself, feeling your own power, and listening to the intuitive guidance system within you. There have been times where I’ve really been struggling, usually with health problems, where I can turn to this practice and feel empowered and get a sense of solace in that connection with the divine feminine.

It’s also allowed me to go more deeply into connecting with my lineage, which has been passed down from one lama to another for thousands of years.

This ancient wisdom still has its place today because humans are humans, and we still suffer with a lot of the same basic issues of living everyday life. So, these are tried and true principles that can help just about anyone. Another reason I wanted to share this practice is, because Tibetan Buddhism is kind of complex, and it can be challenging to find any really good quality guidance or materials for newer practitioners, which makes it a little hard to break into, and I wasn’t finding much of anything that I could refer people to.

When I’ve done online searches to try to find more information or instruction on Green Tara, I wasn’t able to come up with much, and I wasn’t really connecting with the few books I found. So, most of what I share in this episode, I learned directly from two people: the first is my mom, whose Tibetan name is Lama Tsomo. She speaks Tibetan and is an ordained lama, which is something similar to a minister or rabbi. She’s also the author of the book Why Is The Dalai Lama Always Smiling?, which is an introduction to Tibetan Buddhism for westerners.

The other person I learned some of this information from is Namchak Khen Rinpoche. He’s the brother of my teacher, but he is an accomplished scholar and teacher himself.

Now, I wanna give a little disclaimer, which is that I’m not ordained or certified in any way, so what I’m teaching here is just coming from my own experience and what I’ve learned from my teachers. But if you wanna go deeper, you’ll wanna seek out a more qualified instructor. I’ll get more into that at the end, and leave you with some resources. What you’ll hear in this episode today was recorded in a class I taught to a small group of people in my living room. First I gave a talk explaining what was going on, how it works, and why one would want to do Green Tara practice. And then we dove in and actually did it.

But before we get started, I’d love to share the review of the month. This one is from Raphael, he wrote: “Touching. An absolute gem of a podcast, with heartfelt moments and inspiring stories. I highly recommend it.” Thank you Rafael. And if you wanna be featured as the review of the month, head over to iTunes and give a five star review, and be sure to leave your name.

And now, let’s dive into the episode.

So, the practice we’re gonna do tonight is to Green Tara, who is a deity in Tibetan Buddhism, who’s regarded as the Great Mother, the Mother of all Buddhas. She’s also referred to as the Great Liberator. So Green Tara was a princess actually in Sri Lanka, a really long time ago. We actually don’t know how long ago. And, her name was Yeshe Dawa, Dawa means moon. Yeshe is like a form of wisdom. And, yeah, she was Mahayana Buddhist and she lived at the same time as Amitabha, who is the Buddha of limitless light and life. And she was actually his benefactor. She would give food and whatever else to him and his monks. And, some of his students would say to her frequently, “Oh, you know, you’re getting such good karmic merit for helping all these people. You should pray really hard to come back as a man so you can reach enlightenment.”

And, her response was to become very determined to reach enlightenment as a woman, and to keep coming back, keep reincarnating to help as many beings as possible to reach enlightenment, and to keep reincarnating as a woman. And, not only is this my favorite practice and has been for a really long time, but I also feel like it’s really important right now with what’s going on in the world, where the patriarchy seems to kinda be rearing its head. And, there’s a lot of Buddhist feminism I would sort of say around Green Tara. So it seems like the right thing to be bringing forth right now.

And, yeah. So I first started doing this practice pretty much exactly 19 years ago, in a two week retreat with my lama and what was the beginnings of a sangha Buddhist community in Montana, where he taught us all about her, taught us details about the practice and her life, and all kinds of stuff. Then what was that tiny little group of people, sort of mushroomed into this huge thriving community that’s there now, that since then has built this place called The Garden of a Thousand Buddhas, it was meant to me like basically a pilgrimage site, now that most Tibetan people can’t live in Tibet and have built, you know, be where the pilgrimage sites there are.

So, it’s called The Garden of a Thousand Buddhas because there are a thousand three foot high Buddha statues in the shapes of like the spokes of a wheel around this giant 24 foot high central figure of Yum Chenmo, which is another Great Mother figure who’s actually an emanation of Green Tara. The temple there, which is where all of the retreats and workshops and teachings and stuff happen, is a Tara temple. So, if anyone listening ever finds themself in Montana, definitely go check out The Garden of a Thousand Buddhas. I mean there’s like a constant stream of people stopping there to check it out all day ever day. And, it’s really beautiful and just so powerful.

Anyway, so yeah, so Green Tara started out as a princess, did reach enlightenment or became a bodhisattva, which basically is someone who kinda stops just short of reaching enlightenment and dissolving into the ocean of existence, stops just short so that they can keep coming back and helping people to free themselves. And so, in that sense she has immense compassion. It was said that she liberated a thousand people every day before breakfast. So she was busy. Yeah, and her name as the princess as I said was Yeshe Dawa, and then once she became the bodhisattva, became Green Tara, the Tibetan name for Green Tara is Jetsun Dolma.

So, this practice is considered a deity practice. Tibetans are known for doing deity practice, it’s kind of one of the hallmarks of Tibetan Buddhism. And, it’s really drawing on archetypes. So, you may have heard of archetypes in like the Jungian sense of, you know, you might have heard it as like the warrior or the priestess, et cetera. Each one of them has a different name and configuration and whatever. But, they’re basically seen as these principles of reality. A good example is the Great Mother. So, we see our mother as the Great Mother, ’cause that’s like our mother is our point of reference, but that Great Mother feeling is a principle of reality, that is kind of imbued in everything.

These archetypes are everywhere. For example, you know, we went from monarchy to then a new system, you know, democracy obviously, where we still needed to have that point of reference of this archetypal whatever to look up to, that need for something like that to turn to is so ingrained in us. And I think that it’s part of the whole, usually unconscious desire to have something to remind us that there’s something higher, that we’re not separate.

Yeah, so basically we turned from the monarchy to Hollywood for that. But Hollywood and all the movies that we watch and the actors and actresses we pay attention to, and the award shows that they go to and whatever, it’s not actually filling that deep need for like, I would say reverence or also just kind of answering our questions about the universe or … It’s good to still have something deeper to turn to, which different wisdom traditions have these different archetypes. Christians have Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and in Tibetan Buddhism they’ve got these deities. There’s tons and tons of different deities, and Green Tara is one of them.

They believe that these archetypes are in everything, because nothing is separate. I know that sounds like kind of vague and, “What does she mean by that?” So one way to think of it is, like imagine this vast ocean that represents everything in the universe and beyond, and then we thinking that we’re separate, are really just these waves on that ocean, and the waves eventually go back into the ocean and are always part of it, they’re never separate from it. So that’s like us, as part of that greater ocean. And, just like that, the mother archetype is one thing that’s in the soup of that ocean. So if that’s the case, then Green Tara is in there too. So there’s nowhere and no thing in which Green Tara isn’t, if that makes sense. Yeah. So that archetype of the Great Mother is everywhere, including in us.

So, in Green Tara practice, which is a deity practice, we imagine ourselves as the archetypal image of Green Tara, to bring that out of ourselves, while also paying homage to an outside version of her, so like imagining ourselves as Green Tara and imagining a version of Green Tara in front of us too. So, I’m her, but I’m also paying homage to her, it’s both because the principle of the Great Mother is everywhere. It’s in me, it’s in front of me, it’s all around me actually.

So, yeah. So we use these archetypal images in order to feel the quality and presence of the archetype themselves. And this is something that I’ve felt, you know, I’m going about my life as like a regular old human, thinking I’m all separate and all, and then I go to do Green Tara practice, and it’s like, “Oh.” There’s this whole other thing that I’m not even noticing as I’m in my daily life. Like I sit down and imagine becoming her and there’s so much power in that. And, we’ve got these super active imaginations and Tibetan Buddhists like to really utilize that, like making use of our wild imaginations and emotions, and bringing all of that on to the path of enlightenment.

So, directing it in a way that serves a purpose, that’s like ultimately the purpose is to liberate us from the suffering of feeling that separation. So we’re basically using these archetypes to piggyback on them to remind us of the ocean that we are all a part of. But we have trouble remembering we are part of this ocean. That we’re not just the waves, and if we didn’t have trouble remembering that, we’d all be enlightened already. That’s kind of how that works. So, deity practice is one of the hallmarks of Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism, and the goal is to help us to get pure vision.

So we see things in this super confused way, we don’t really know how to clean the windshield on our own in order to get clarity, to see clearly. So, we use deity practice, working on the archetypal level as a bridge for our complex minds. So, taking our monkey mind and our tendency for complex thoughts, you know, our mind is kinda like this super computer that’s super active all the time, and it wants to think about stuff. So rather than trying to make our minds go blank, we use these practices to turn our mind towards the path of enlightenment, rather than on rumination and misery and grasping at stuff. And, these are really efficient methods honed over a really long time by masters who were coming from that place of not being separate from the whole ocean.

So, if I’m ever feeling disempowered in whatever way, I can use deity practice as a really good anecdote do that, because it’s an opportunity to remind ourselves of our power, of our divinity, of our connectedness. But we need that bridge to the divine from the complex reality we’re used to, to remember we’re all one enlightened mind basically.

So, I wanna kinda give you a bit of an overview of like the sort of progression of events in this practice that we’re about to do. So, if you imagine welcoming an illustrious guest, then this practice starts to make a lot more sense. So, imagine Nelson Mandela or Gandhi or the Dalai Lama in this case, since it’s Tibetan Buddhism we’re talking about, let’s just use the Dalai Lama as an example. So, you imagine you invite the Dalai Lama to come and then, you know, he comes, you open the door, you welcome him in, you offer him all sorts of lovely wonderful things, you praise him, and you might even make a request of him, that’s what’s happening here.

So, you’ll see these stages of inviting, welcoming, offering praise and making requests. You’ll see these stages in all Tibetan deity practice. So, in this practice, we’re gonna at various points visualize ourselves as Green Tara. For those listening, if you’re on my website, there’s gonna be a photo there of her. If you’re listening through Apple Podcast or somewhere else where you can’t see an image of her, it’ll be both on my website and on all of my social media, all of which is at A Show Of Hearts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all the things. So, see if you could find that image. And, if for whatever reason you can’t find it on any of my places, just Google Green Tara and you’ll see a picture of her.

So, throughout the practice we visualize ourselves as Green Tara, this green goddess-ey Great Mother woman with the right foot sticking out, actually has green skin. And, we are becoming empowered by becoming this deity. And, there are different deities associated with different qualities, and they’re all qualities that we have deep inside of us, that we haven’t been able to bring up out of the basement for whatever reason. So, we’re using this to bring those qualities out. For example, compassion, in the case of Tara that’s one of the things that we’re bringing out.

So, another thing I wanna talk about is mantra, which mantras are sound formulas that are connected to specific aspects of reality. So, great masters who were much more aware than us, put together particular sound formulas for specific effects, that if you pay really really close attention, you can actually feel in your body, like the heart syllable is hung, which if you sit still and close your eyes and pay attention to the sensations in your body and then say, “Hung.” You’ll feel that resonating in your chest.

So, the Tara mantra connects us to the Great Mother principle. That’s what that sound formula was designed for. In this practice there’s various different mantras and other things that we’re chanting. The first thing that I’m gonna chant is this very well known thing called the Seven Line Prayer, that is at the beginning of a lot of different practices, and it’s a way to call the enlightened presence of this guide, Guru Rinpoche, the Tibetan is Guru Rinpoche, the Sanskrit is Padmasambhava, he was the guy that brought Buddhism from India to Tibet, and then worked with this king, the king of the time in Tibet, Trisong Detsen, worked with him to combine Buddhism that he’d brought from India, with the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet called Bon. I’ll talk more about that after we do the practice.

So, that’s who Guru Rinpoche is, the one who brought Buddhism to Tibet. So, that’s what that first thing you’re gonna hear me chanting is. And again, that’s to call his presence in. And then the same with this other thing that you’ll hear towards the end called The Hundred Syllable Mantra, which is to this guy Vajrasattva, and he’s all about cleansing and wiping the windshield basically. And, you don’t have to remember all of this stuff that I just said, I’m just saying it so that you have these examples of like, “Oh okay, so these are some of the different kinds of things that mantra is used for in the context of an actual practice.” It’s a formula, you know, for alchemizing the mind really.

So, the heart of this practice is this part where I’ll be calling out the names of the 21 Tara’s. So there are 21 different versions or emanations or whatever of Tara. There are different colors, they have different qualities. Some are wrathful, like that mama bear, fierce quality I was talking about earlier. Some are about generosity and bounty, some are extremely attractive, others totally ferocious. They all serve their own different important purpose. And this practice is calling out and praising each of them, the 21 of them.

All right. So, just take a moment to get comfortable. So just take a breath and let it go gently. Just start to let your body and your breath relax. With each breath your body becomes more and more relaxed.

And as we practice, make sure you’re not trying too hard. Just do your best and sort of just let go. Make sure there’s a sense of ease.

So now imagine that you are a part of this vast ocean. See if you can bring up that feeling of the vast ocean. And this ocean is completely compassionate and so loving. This ocean is aware. It’s the source of everything.

It’s all compassionate and all loving because it’s the generator of everything.

Immerse yourself in the feeling of that compassionate intent as the ocean.

And let your breath be gentle and natural.

Keep feeling that immense compassion as the ocean. Keep feeling yourself as part of this ultimately compassionate, ultimately loving vast ocean.

Out of this ocean you arise as Green Tara. So imagine yourself as this green skinned lady, sitting cross legged but with your right leg kinda sticking out in front of you a little bit. And don’t worry about having the image of her be perfect. It’s more about the feeling.

So here you are embodying Green Tara. And see if you can bring up a sense of faith in her, in recognizing this principle of reality, of the vast ocean and her as part of it. Feel the power and the truth of that.

So now continue to visualize yourself as Green Tara and I’m gonna start singing and chanting a bunch of stuff. Do not worry at all about not understanding what I’m saying. It’s not necessarily meant to be understood, it’s meant to be felt. So just let the feeling of it wash over you, and work its magic on you, alchemize you. Think of it as sacred sound.

(Singing)

I’m just gonna say that in English so you guys have a little bit of an idea. Hung in the northwest of the country of origin, in the pollen heart of a stemmed lotus, endowed with the wondrous supreme siddhi, you are renowned as the lotus born, surrounded by a retinue of many Dakinis. I follow in your footsteps. Please approach and grant your blessings Guru Pama Siddhi Hung. In the sky in front of me appears the accomplished, transcendent conqueress, inseparable from my lama, from the mandala of the hand of protector Amitabha, whence arose from the eye of the lord of the world, the swift mother, the source of an ocean of Dakinis. 21 emanations of the conquerors compassion, the glorious swift mother, the activity of all victorious ones. To my lama, lord protector, inseparable from all enlightened ones, I prostrate and pray that you bestow blessings and empowerment.

Namo, to venerable mother, the essence of the ocean of refuge, I go for protection until I reach the heart of enlightenment. May all sentient beings drowning in the ocean of suffering accomplish the state of the mother Arya Tara.

Ho, mother Arya Tara and all the victorious ones and their heirs, I prostrate, make offerings and confess negative actions and transgressions from my heart. I rejoice in virtue and invoke the Buddhas to remain and teach the Dharma. I dedicate the accumulation of merit to attaining the state of the exalted mother.

Om Ma Hung, in the completely pure realm of Uloko, a ray of turquoise leaves, in the center of an ocean filled with the clouds of Sumanta Vajra’s offerings.

Tam, instantly upon recollection I appear as the perfect form of mother Arya Tara. Clearly in the three places, forehead, throat and heart, appear three Vajra letters: Om, Ah, Hung.

So now I’m gonna pause here and just explain. So what we’re gonna visualize now is basically you have two options here. You can keep just visualizing yourself as Green Tara, if what I’m about to explain is a little too complex. Or you can do this next visualization which is, so you as Tara imagine light rays coming from your heart, going out in every direction as far as, you know, basically out into infinity. And these light rays go way way way out and then they call forth the ultimate, most empowered, most wise version of Tara, who appears in front of you.

So now you’ve got yourself as Tara and Tara in front of you. Here we are as Green Tara, and we’re about to imagine the light rays coming from our heart, shooting out in all directions, way to into infinity, calling forth this powerful version of Green Tara. So just imagine that as I say this next part.

From the heart light rays radiate to all the victorious ones and their heirs, invoking the form of Arya Tara, with 21 emanated Goddesses, who dancing in delight, appear real and perfectly clear to my senses.

And then this next part is what’s called a mandala offering. So as I’m saying this next part, you can just imagine that you’re offering to her all of the most wonderful things in the universe, especially all of the most wonderful things you have. And again, keeping in mind that idea that you’re offering this to this illustrious guest that you’ve invited.

So … Om Ma Hung, together with the ocean and clouds of real and imagined offerings, I offer the mandala of my body enjoyments and collection of virtue. May I and all beings gather the accumulations and purify obscurations. From now until the heart of enlightenment is reached, may we never be separated from the compassion of the exalted mother.

Okay, so this next part is the real heart of the practice. This is where I’m gonna be calling out the 21 names of Tara. It’s a really long chant that is first recited two times in a row, then I go back to do that mandala offering we just did. Then I recite this 21 Tara praises three times, go back to the mandala offering, and then I recite this seven times. That’s how this practice was designed to be done, it’s part of the magic. And, while I’m signing this, just imagine yourself as basically supplicating to her as if you’re asking her for help for whatever’s going on in your life, you know, aliments, you have whatever’s going on that you would need help with, as if you’re like a child calling out to its mother.

And, you’re calling to the version of Tara in front of you, that you’re visualizing. You’re still also Tara, but that’s sort of an afterthought you don’t really need to think about. You’re just really focusing on the Tara in front of you, supplicating to her, and bringing forth that sense of faith in her.

There have been plenty of times when I’ve been doing this practice where I’ll suddenly break down into tears, either during the part where I’m visualizing myself as Green Tara, and it’s kind of reminding me of my power, which I may have kind of forgotten about for a while. Or during the part where I’m imagining her in front of me and, like I said, supplicating to her as if, you know, sort of like a child reaching for their mother, asking for help. If I’m really struggling with something in my life, that can feel really powerful. So, if you find yourself getting really emotional during this practice, that’s totally normal.

(Singing)

So that was one.

(Singing)

So back to the mandala offering and imagining offering her all of these wonderful things. Om Ma Hung, together with the ocean and clouds of real and imagined offerings, I offer the mandala of my body enjoyments and collection of virtue. May I and all beings gather the accumulations and purify obscurations. From now until the heart of enlightenment is reached, may we never be separated from the compassion of the exalted mother.

(Singing)

So now back to the mandala offering. Om Ma Hung, together with the ocean and clouds of real and imagined offerings, I offer the mandala of my body enjoyments and collection of virtue. May I and all beings gather the accumulations and purify obscurations. From now until the heart of enlightenment is reached, may we never be separated from the compassion of the exalted mother.

And one thing I wanted to add before I do this next recitation that is gonna be longer, it’s gonna be seven times, is just with everything going on in the world and how, you know, I was saying earlier about how the patriarchy’s really been rearing its head lately, if we can use this practice to flood the world with more feminine energy, but like powerful, ultimate mother, ultimately powerful, kind of fierce, but like truly ultimately loving, compassionate, feminine energy, that’s part of what we’re doing here too. So …

(Singing)

Khey, from the mandala of the hand of protector Amitabha, whence arose from the eye of the lord of the world Amitayurdhyana Sutra the swift mother, the source of an ocean of Dakinis, 21 emanations of the conqueror’s compassion, the glorious swift mother, the activity of all victorious ones. To my lama and lord protector, inseparable from all enlightened ones, I prostrate and pray that you bestow blessings and empowerment.

So, for this next part, imagine that the version of Tara that’s in front of you now comes and places herself above your head, facing forward. And then out of her comes what we’re referring to as the empowerments, all of these powerful qualities that she possesses. The visualization that I’m gonna be doing is a little bit complicated, so I think what I’m just gonna have you guys do is just imagine coming out of her is this like kind of golden liquid, it’s basically wisdom nectar called Amrita. So just imagine the Green Tara above you has this golden wisdom nectar pouring down into you, completely filling you.

And, take a minute to do that while I’m reciting this next part, and then imagine her dissolving, kind of pouring down in through the top of your head. So she dissolves into you and fills you. And so, now you are the version of Tara that you had imagined yourself as before, that is also filled with and imbued with the ultimate powers of the ultimate version of Tara that was coming from the outside. So …

I prostrate and pray that you bestow blessings and empowerment from the exalted teachers, the places, white, red, blue, yellow light rays, radiate sequentially. They dissolve into my four places. I obtain the four empowerments. Arya Tara joyfully dissolves into light then into myself. I appear clearly as the accomplished transcendent conqueress. Look upon the absolute noble mother, the unity of lucidity and emptiness. And as I’m saying that there are peacocks calling in the background which is very interesting.

In Tibetan Buddhism they use peacock feathers a lot because they’re this symbol of, according to them anyway, peacocks can eat all kinds of different things that are supposedly poisonous and it doesn’t harm them, and in fact it ends up making their feathers more colorful. And peacocks are totally my spirit animal, at least right now. And so, I really like that image.

Now you are Tara, this like ultimately powerful version of Tara. You’re kind of glowing with this very pure power, and just full of compassion and love. So, now we’re going to sing together if you guys wanna join me. So, we’re gonna sing the Green Tara mantra which is very short. I promise it is mercifully short. If you guys wanna join me, you don’t have to. So, I’m just gonna recite it once so you can hear it and then I’ll quick teach it to you. So, the words are: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha. So, Om Tare.

Om Tare.

Tuttare.

Ture Soha.

Om Tare.

Tuttare.

Ture Soha.

Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha.

Om Tare.

Tuttare.

Ture Soha.

So, Om Tare Tuttare.

Om Tare Tuttare.

Ture Soha.

Let’s do it one more time. Om Tare Tuttare.

Om Tare Tuttare.

Ture Soha.

So I’m just gonna sing it, and just let me sing it through a few times on my own so you can hear it, and then if and when you’re ready you can join in.

(Singing)

Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha.

So this next part I mentioned in the beginning of … It is just more archetypal sound, it’s called the Hundred Syllable mantra, it’s to Vajrasattva who is about cleansing and purifying.

(Tibetan chanting)

Ho, before the exalted mother I confess the mass of my impurity and faults, with my completely pure three doors, I enter the path of timeless awareness. I dedicate the assembly of virtue of three times within basic space. May I quickly attain the state of the unity of the noble mother, until enlightenment is reached, may there be the auspiciousness of never being separated from the compassionate protector of my lama, venerable mother.

So, I’m gonna end the official practice there. It can be much much longer, but we’ll leave it at that and then what we end every Tibetan practice with is dedicating the merit of the practice to, dedicating the karmic, like positive karmic accumulation that we’ve acquired by doing this practice, to the enlightenment of all beings. So, I’m gonna say it in Tibetan and then I’ll repeat it in English.

(Tibetan chanting)

By this virtue having swiftly accomplished the lama of origin, may I bring all beings without exception to that level.

And then I’m just gonna sing my lama, my teacher’s long life prayer. His name is Tulku Sangak Rinpoche.

(Singing)

Next I checked in with the audience and asked them to share their experience and ask questions. Here’s what the first person, Liz, had to say.

All right. So the first mantra that you sang, I felt sensations, vibrations, I felt my nervous system working, and I felt my head just like, a powerful activation going through my body. Before I got confirmation about this event, I did a little bit research and I started doing the mantras and I started to notice after the mantras I was having things come up, but like synchronicities and good fortune. And I was meeting people and just I guess what’s another word for it? Coincidence, like good coincidence I guess.

So it’s funny you’re saying this because just last night I was saying to somebody that at times in my life where I’m doing more practice, whether it’s Tibetan practice or whatever, where I’m like really dropping into that, those spiritual feelings of grace and awe and that kind of thing, and just focusing on that part of my life more. All of a sudden all kinds of synchronicities start to happen in my life and things start falling into place and the people I need to meet show up. And, I start literally seeing signs and, you know, the more practice I do and the more I focus on that area of my life, the more that stuff happens.

So, yeah. That’s great. Keep with it.

Liz also said that the long chant I did at the end was really powerful for her. So she wanted to know more.

The thing that I chanted right after the Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha, right after that the thing that I was saying really fast, that’s the Hundred Syllable mantra to Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva as I said is use for cleansing and purifying and clearing. And that Hundred Syllable mantra of his is thrown into a lot of Tibetan practices, usually towards the end, in case, you know, you didn’t totally 100% didn’t do the practice right or in case your motivation wasn’t 100% pure 100% of the time, which is likely ’cause we’re humans, we’re not totally enlightened, so you use that to kind of cleanse anything that came out of that.

Yeah. And so, in that sense there are a lot of things like that that are like, there are certain mantras that everybody knows because they’re imbued in so many different practices, and all theses practices are so action packed with these very specific things, like what I was just describing of cleansing and clearing at the end of the practice, calling Guru Rinpoche at the very beginning, which I mentioned, that one at the very very beginning. That was called the Seven Line Prayer. And that’s at the beginning of a lot of practices, not just this one. And that was one of the first things that I learned. I think it was in Bhutan when I started learning that one. Or no I think it was in Bhutan I started learning some of the shorter mantras like Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha, or Om Mani Padme Hum, which for like Tibetan lay people, the only mantra that a lot of them know is Om Mani Padme Hum, which is associated with Avalokiteshvara, which in Tibetan is Chenrezik, who the Dalai Lama is an emanation of that. He’s the Buddha of compassion.

So in the kirtan world, is there a common place for a Hindu mantra to be set to music, in the case of Deva Premal for example, that one Om Tare Tuttare, I’ve heard of that one.

Yeah, I heard her do that.

Her arrangement of it is quite beautiful. But I don’t think I’ve heard any Tibetan Buddhist chants be set to music, so do they exist and if so could you tell us about that?

Yes. So, there are a number of them. They’re not that easy to find, but there’s one in particular that I love telling people about. So there’s this Tibetan nun by the name of Tsering Wangmo which the translation of her name is epic. So Tsering Wangmo means long life power woman. And it’s actually a fairly common name, Tsering Wangmo. And she’s like my sister. She, way back I think it was in 2000 actually, moved to Montana where my mom lives and lived there for many years, lived with my mom for a long time, and she and I were both having really intense health problems for years together. And so, we spent a lot of time together, and she’s now back in Nepal, she’s recorded a number of albums. They call her the singing nun over there.

And, there is different instrumentalists who accompany her. There’s I think Nepalese guy who plays this wooden flute along with her. But she has this album that is, it’s only three songs, but each of them is really long, and one of them is this thing to the medicine Buddha, that is alternating her singing and my mom reciting the text that she’s signing in English. So the nun singing in Tibetan, my mom reciting in English. And I think that track is 18 minutes long. I don’t know if, I think it’s on iTunes. I mean I have it and I think that it’s on iTunes. If I can find it I’ll put it in the show notes. But again, her name is Tsering Wangmo, and she’s a very sweet, very dedicated practitioner. She loves Tara, she’s very devoted to Tara. So, yeah.

Any other questions?

For the Green Tara, the mantra, did you explain the translation for it exactly?

So that’s tricky because each one of the syllables is like a whole concept, and there’s no really direct translation. And even in the text that I was reading from, it gives the English translation to like everything but that and the Hundred Syllable mantra because it really is just pure archetypal sound. And there are words in there referring directly to her, and then there’s Om at the beginning of it, which, you know, Om is a whole concept in and of itself.

But this is another case of just, it doesn’t really matter what the words mean, you just let it wash over you and trust that they’re really powerful. Yeah. Because it is basically just primordial sound that is specifically designed to call her in and to bring on the feeling and essence of Great Mother, Ultimate Mother. So, yeah.

What’s a good way to start a practice? Is this a good place to enter or not?

That is a really good question. So, how do I answer that? I would say this practice is not necessarily where you would want to start just ’cause it’s so complex. It’s great if you have someone around who really knows how to do it, who can regularly walk you through it, and I do plan on leading this here in Miami monthly whenever I’m in town, and probably in New York when I’m there.

If you wanna start having a regular practice at home, I would say to start with something more like inside meditation. But you can just start chanting the Green Tara mantra which is very simple, Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha, and just imagine yourself as her and feel that feeling of like the ultimately compassionate, loving, but fierce mother. And there are plenty of practitioners that like all they do is Green Tara practice. And, like I said, this practice, all these practices are so action packed, that you can pick any one deity practice and use that as all you really need to reach enlightenment.

Most of the time people use a combination of different practices to get to enlightenment, but you could just use this. So, I guess really what I would say is, Green Tara practice it is kind of a spectrum of, you know, you can get a lot of benefit to of just imagining yourself as her and not even saying a damn thing. Or you can add the mantra to it and it adds another layer. Or if you really start feeling the power of this practice and wanna throw yourself into it, like as I just demonstrated, it’s like a whole thing. So, you know, that’s definitely something that one can learn. But the problem is that Tibetan Buddhism is more complex than most forms of Buddhism in terms of like all the ritual and fanfare and mantras and all that stuff, partly because when Buddhism was brought from India to Tibet, it was combined with the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet called Bon, that was very ceremonial, ritualistic, kind of shamanic, and that’s why Tibetan Buddhism has so much more pageantry and color and ritual than any other form of Buddhism.

My experience really is mostly just with Tibetan Buddhism, but from what I’ve seen and heard, other forms of Buddhism like Theravada and Mahayana, so Theravada is basically like Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and a few other little areas right around there, Cambodia. You know, some of them have some color and fanfare and stuff too, but Tibetan Buddhism is so much more complicated. So, that makes it harder to break into if you wanna really get into it, when you’re not somewhere in the Himalayas where that’s more easily accessible. So, it is more and more accessible here, but I would say a great place to start is my mom’s book, and the other things she offers on her website, which I’ll put in the show notes. ‘Cause she really designed it all for beginnings.

And then there are a lot of great teachers out there of, you know, there are things that all Buddhism kind of shares, more entry level, friendly practices, like the Four Measureables, loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity, and the meditation practices associated with each of those, one of which I did a recent episode on, on compassion. And, also just basic insight meditation, you know, you may have heard of the term Vipassana, which is meditation practice that as far as I know pervades all the different forms of Buddhism. They have it in Tibetan Buddhism too.

So, just one last thought I wanna leave you guys with is, again back to what’s going on politically, et cetera, in the world. Remember the feelings that came up for you during this practice. How powerful it felt, what it felt like to immerse yourself in these powerful feminine qualities of this Goddess, and see if you can find little ways to conjure that within yourself in order to fill the world more with that energy, as often as you can. You don’t have to know how to do this practice in order to do that. So, thank you guys.

If you’ve appreciated being able to learn more about Tibetan Buddhism in this episode and the previous one, please drop me a line at info@ashowofhearts.com. Or on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter @ashowofhearts. That way I’ll know to keep putting out episodes on this subject. And, if you’re feeling called to explore Tibetan Buddhism more deeply, you’ll want to connect with a real lama who’s deeply trained in this system. Like I said, I’m not ordained or certified. I’m just sharing my own experience and some of the more entry level practices that anyone can do. There are many much more advanced practices that need to be taught by an actual lama.

For beginners, I recommend my mom’s book, Why Is The Dalai Lama Always Smiling?, as well as the materials on her website. And for more advanced practitioners, you can find information about my lama Tulku Sangak Rinpoche, as well as his brother Namchak Khen Rinpoche, at ewam.org that’s E-W-A-M.org. You can explore these links and more in today’s show notes. Or if you want advice on how to get more involved, you can write to me at info@ashowofhearts.com.

Thank you for listening to A Show Of Hearts. If you enjoyed what you heard, please subscribe in iTunes and share it with your favorite people. Visit or website ashowofhearts.com, where you can sign up for emails and explore all our episodes in depth. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @ashowofhearts. Remember to choose courage even when it’s scary, and join me in igniting the world with our hearts.

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